Year Abroad: The first week back

                  It’s always hard to leave home.  I have now done this twice in the space of only a few months.  Christmas was great, and I will probably write a little about this at some other time.  I was so happy to be home and I did fall into the swing of it so it was another wrench to come back to Spain. 

                

                Following the hectic and unfortunate flight/delay/having to stay overnight in a random hostal in Barajas and shell out another 25 euro for a train ticket let’s just say I was not in the happiest of mind-sets.  I was at a low point with Spain, I didn’t want to be there and here were more problems that I had to overcome just to get back to the place where I was pretty sure I didn’t want to be (this was just the stress talking of course).  

                The hostal was actually really nice.  And it included transport to and from the airport.  The guy who drove the minibus started asking where I was from and all the usual stuff.  We ended up talking about the Loch Ness Monster and whether or not I believed it existed.  “Pues si, claro”…then I asked whether they had monsters in lochs in Spain, to which the answer is no but he told me about the “caras de Belmez”.  In a house in the small town of Belmez, about an hour from Baeza, faces have appeared and disappeared since the 1970’s.  The man told me that they were apparently the faces of souls trapped there who are screaming because they want to be free. 

                

                On the Tuesday I went back to the airport to get the train to Atotcha and from there the train to Linares-Baeza where Geni was waiting to pick me up.  I got back to my flat, unpacked, skyped and then slept because I had my 8.15 start. 

                Being back was a bit lonely.  Leaving a house of four people and coming back to my little flat was strange.  But thankfully on the Thursday I bumped into Anna, one of the Americans.  We went for some tapas and talked about our holidays and made arrangements for the weekend.  Mat was to come down from La Puerta and Leah and Adele from Ubeda.               

                

                On the Friday I ended up going out with two of my teacher friends and some of their other friends to Da Vinci’s which is one of my favourite places because it is normally quiet enough to have a conversation and like most places here the drinks are cheap and the tapas is good.  Except I don’t understand the obsession with gambas, even if I didn’t have a really bad allergy.  I mean, you have to pull off their little legs and the shells.  And I thought that being hundreds of kilometres from the sea meant that I wouldn’t encounter seafood often, but it is so very Spanish and I am starting to like some of the fish that they serve, or at least I can eat it without gagging.  I have always liked salmon, I like proper fishy fish but it would never be my first, second or even third choice.  That night was really good, conversations were interesting and I got to bust out my Spanish which has, I feel, improved so much in the past few months.  I still lack vocabulary but it is coming, all part of the process.

                

                   

                And then it was Saturday.  Time to celebrate Dave’s birthday!  Mat had indeed made it down and brought his new room-mate, Candice from New Zealand although she has recently moved to Adelaide (where my Aussie relatives live).  She has just recently graduated and was pleased to find that she wasn’t the youngest person there (she is 21, most of the Americans are turning 23 or 24 this year, so I’m the baby at 20).   After the cake, which Candice brought with her, and the weird whiskey, gin and lemon cocktails…we went to our usual haunt, Café Najera.  I finally completed a time honoured tradition and drank part of (I won’t even say most of) a Jarra (1litre) of beer, I hate beer…a good time was had by all.

                

                

          After Najera we went to Café Central and danced…now this is an area where I’ve made a lot of progress…I still feel awkward dancing, but I can usually relax into it nowadays…I mean other than my friends I won’t see any of these people again so what does it matter if I look like a tube.  And sometimes it is even quite fun…I think my Scottish friends would be quite proud of me and hopefully I can transfer these skills to Glasgow.  Spain is so relaxed though, the atmosphere is one of “if you want to dance then dance”.  The UK has much more pressure.

                Anna and I were dancing the opening part of “strip the willow” to Rhinna’s “Love in a hopeless place”.  I think that was the most random part of the night.  On the way home we went into Rango, another club, but it was a bit dead. 

                

               All in all that first weekend served to remind me that whilst I love being at home with my family and my friends, most of whom I’ve known for years and years, I have good friends here.  People that I know for a fact I will miss like crazy when I go home.  I’m determined to travel back to Spain if they are still here next year, and eventually I will realise my dream of travelling the States and I now have a couch to stay on in a few of them.      

Year Abroad: Burns, Booze and Birthdays

             I'm going back through my old posts and trying to complete my chronological year.  This stuff tends to be something I wrote about a specific day and then had too much other stuff to get done so they fell to the sidelines.  Also I feel like I may have published this before (please tell me if I have).

              January 25^th, Burns night, a day to celebrate the poet and all this Scottish.  Except I was in Spain, a long way away from the nearest Scot (I think).  There are some here in Jaen I just haven’t met them.  Instead of grey skies and rain, there was sunshine and heat.  The Sunday beforehand had been 23 degrees…in January!  Now that was a day when I loved Spain, give me sun and I’m a happy bunny.  But anyways, what I’m trying to say is that Burns night, one of my favourite celebrations at home, was just another day here, and an uneventful day at that.               

            On the Thursday we all went out for our normal tapas night and this was the first time I’d seen Jenna since she’d gotten engaged.  It had also recently been here birthday.  We got talking about the “gathering” and she volunteered her flat as it is much bigger than mine, and she said that she’d do some cooking as well.  I volunteered to get the birthday cake and some crisps and it was bring your own booze, so now we had a plan.  And we were all set to have a pretty unconventional Burns night…

            Friday night was a time to meet two new friends.  Candice from New Zealand, although her family recently moved to Adelaide…so when I finally go visit my Aussie family, I can visit her as well, she lives with Mat in La Puerta, and Todd from Washington State, who had actually just met every person in the room that day.  He is in a tiny tiny town called Siles.  If Baeza is Coatbridge, the Siles is Annithill (this only works for people who know the area where I’m from) – Siles is in the middle of nowhere and doesn’t have that many people living there, it’s just cruel to put someone out there so isolated.  Mat and Candice are the closest assistants and they are 20 km away.  Once again I count my blessings for being put in Baeza.

             The Friday night was fun, wine and whiskey at Dave and Anna’s, then to La Pena for some impromptu flamenco – I think this was Candice’s first experience of live flamenco in Spain, and she loved it.  They even played a sort-of Blues guitar mixed with flamenco song at one point, that was my favourite.  I spent the night chatting with Candice about the TV programmes that the UK and New Zealand share.  She told me that Coronation Street or Corro is huge over there and that just about everybody watches it.  Then we went to 11 del 11 and danced for a bit, but everyone was exhausted so we went home relatively early.

            Then it was Saturday and time to organise the party.  I went and bought the cake and candles, then went down to Jenna’s to “decorate”…I put up my two Scotland flags.  Meanwhile she had prepared so much food.  And it was all brilliant.  I stood chatting to her in the kitchen whilst she prepared quesadillas, and almost everyone else was sat around her dining table cracking on with the wine and beer.  Jenna and I lamented about the state of Spanish cheese…it’s too mild…and she was glad to hear that we have good strong cheese in the UK. 

Jenna preparing some food.

The wine table

            A traditional part of a Burns night is the “toast to the lassies”…there was only one person who we needed to toast, and that was Jenna.  She had allowed us to use her flat, and had spent ages making food for us.  Thanks Jenna!  Shortly after this we did the birthday cake.  The cake was a sort-of ice cream cake but very chocolaty…when Leah was handing me a piece it fell, and surprising all apart from myself, I caught it before it hit the cream couch…I’m on a lucky streak of catching things just before disaster…a beer glass in Torreon, a box of vodka bottles in ASDA and now the chocolate cake. 

            Then it was time to try and attempt to teach them how to Ceilidh dance.  Of course I picked the easiest one “The Gay Gordons” because it is simply just walking with a few spins thrown in…it should be perfectly simple to learn, right?  Not so much.             

             

Year Abroad 3: I need to decide when to leave/birthday blues

The BA sale is on until the 12th of July so that gives me precisely 48 hours to book my tickets so that I am guaranteed a good deal.  Problem is that the Andalucian government in all their wisdom haven't announced a date for the induction course yet, and probably won't for some time.  I'm going to have to risk booking a flight and maybe missing the course or finding myself with more free time to explore before starting my job.  The second option is probably beneficial as I have a lot to do when I first get to Spain.  I need to get forms filled in by the local police department so that I can get my NIE - numero de individulaes extranjeros - which is required to A) open a Spanish bank account so that B) they can give me my wages.  I also have to find a flat, organise a sim card for my phone and find my way about.

That all sounds good so far doesn't it?

But...and here's the kicker...I will miss my birthday.  Now I know its just a date and it is arbitrary and doesn't mean anything, but to me it symbolises a lot of what I have to sacrifice this year.  I have to give up my family and friends and go months without seeing the special people in my life.  I also know that I will be home for a short period at Christmas and really this first part is only 3 months.  But I have decided on a new course of action and that is to move my birthday forward by one month, for this year only.  This should give me time to celebrate and not be too sad about going.    

At this moment in time I am planning to depart Glasgow on the 24th/25th September and fly to Madrid where I will spend the night before travelling onwards to Baeza.  This will give me a week before I start my job to get myself sorted and to meet the people at my school etc.  I am sure I shall be far too busy on my actual birthday to be sad.

That is just some of the stuff keeping me up at night :)